Alternatives
by prepare4trouble
Summary: If Gabriel and Beelzebub hadn't tried to kill their angel and their demon, how else might they have dealt with them? A series of short fics showing alternatives and how they might have played out.
1. Chapter 1

It wasn't so bad, once they got used to it. Heaven and Hell had missed a trick, really; by far the worst punishment would have been to do this to _one_ of them, let one of them age and eventually die while the other could do nothing but watch. There was no miracle that could stop the passage of time, and a mortal lifespan, to an immortal being, passed in the blink of an eye.

At least they were together. Once they had got used to the fact that they could no longer sober up after a marathon drinking session, and instead had to deal with the resulting hangover, once Aziraphale had adjusted to needing to sleep, and Crowley to having to eat rather than just watch the angel indulge, it turned out that it wasn't the worst thing that could have happened.

Of course, he was well aware that he might feel differently in a few decade's time, when they were nearing the end of their tenure on Earth. He didn't know what would come after, not for them. He didn't know where they would end up, or whether they would be together. He didn't even know what happened to human souls that were gathered by Heaven and Hell. It had never been his department.

He tried not to think about it.

They each had money. Neither had had much use for it until now, but they had accumulated it over the centuries, and now they were able to put it to use. It was enough to keep them very comfortable on Earth for however long they might get to stay. It had been enough to allow them to travel the world, or at least parts of it, for several years. Eventually, they had returned to London because when it came down to it, they had both realised that it was the only place that they really wanted to be.

Crowley still wore sunglasses most of the time. He claimed that he had just gotten used to it, and maybe that was true, but Aziraphale couldn't help but wonder whether that was the whole truth. He had seen him, in the early days, staring into mirrors as though fascinated and horrified by what he was seeing.

His eyes were brown. A soft brown that appeared lighter in the sunlight. They were beautiful, but they were not Crowley's eyes. Aziraphale didn't know what they had looked like before — he had never known him as an angel — but he suspected they had been a lot like that.

They were the only real, visible change so far; the only thing that they could point to as evidence that they were human now. True, they could no longer perform miracles, and that was quite the hinderance, and true, they needed to be more careful not to damage their human bodies now that they knew with absolute certainty that they would not be issued a new one should they be discorpora... killed. But these were things that it was possible not to think about.

That Crowley had human eyes, and that he no longer wore a snake-like sigil on the side of his face were the only things that they could see; that they could refuse to ignore.

Hunger was strange. Although Aziraphale had always enjoyed food, his body had never required it before. The sensation of his stomach asking to be filled had been disconcerting at first. He found it easier now.

Now, he had learned to listen to his body, he understood its moods; the difference between true hunger and simply fancying a snack. He found that he enjoyed food even more now, if such a thing were possible. The act of satisfying his hunger was so much better than simply eating because he wanted to. The same with thirst; in six thousand years he had never known the simple joy of quenching his thirst by sipping an ice-cold drink on a hot day.

Sleep had proven more difficult to get used to, but Crowley had coaxed him through it in a similar manner to the way that Aziraphale had helped the former demon with food, and now that he had grown accustomed to it, he found that a good night's sleep was almost as satisfying as a well-cooked meal. The two combined were even better still, and he found that a full belly made sleep come easier anyway.

He didn't like dreams. No matter how accustomed he might become to sleeping, he didn't think that he would ever grow used to his mind creating a false reality for him as he did. In his dreams, he was often still an angel, and he would wake confused and disoriented, crying out in horror as the loss hit him anew.

In those moments, Crowley held him; wrapped his arms around him and held on tight until the moment passed.

There was something about the knowledge that their time on Earth was limited that made it feel different. There was an urgency to everything now; a need to experience the world in its entirety before it was too late. He knew that was impossible. Six millennia and there was still so much more to see. In a few short decades he could never have it all.

In his weaker moments, terror gripped at him and he wanted to scream at God, at Gabriel and Sandalphon, and at the whole universe for the injustice of it all. In his better moments, it sometimes felt as though the looming deadline amplified the experiences; made everything feel so much _more_.

Sometimes, he felt so much that he wanted to cry, not from sadness, but from the sheer intensity of feeling.

He was beginning to feel the signs of age. Subtle still, but he felt an ache in his joints when the wind was cold that hadn't been there before. Even in the early days of mortality, he had felt very little difference between the body he had worn as an angel, and the one he wore now. They were the same, of course; the only difference was that time could touch it now in a way that it could not before.

It would only get worse. He knew that. He had seen what time did to mortals. He had watched it transform them from screaming babies into children filled with joy and love, to adults, growing gradually more cynical as the pressures of life wore them down, and finally to old men and women, sometimes bent and wrinkled with age, ill, and tired of life.

They were the lucky ones; the ones who, when their time came, were ready to leave the world and move on to what came after.

Aziraphale did not believe that he would ever be ready. Neither of them would. They had been on Earth for six thousand years and it was still not enough; he still wanted more. He would never be satisfied, and the closer the end came — and he could already feel it growing closer every day — the more certain he became that this had been a punishment and not a mercy.

But then, when he and Crowley ended another day with a whiskey in the bookshop before heading up to bed and falling asleep in each other's arms, he wondered, perhaps, whether he was wrong.


	2. Chapter 2

They called it the Sorting Department, although that wasn't its official name, and all Aziraphale could think about whenever anybody mentioned it, was the Sorting Hat, which led him, inevitably, to thoughts of Crowley, who had introduced him to the stories. He had heard of Harry Potter before, of course he had, he had simply dismissed it as not his kind of thing, until Crowley had — as Crowley had a tendency to do — changed his mind.

The demon had preferred the films to the books; he had never been much into reading. He was happy enough to listen though, and over the course of a month after the world didn't end, Aziraphale had read the first book to him at a pace of around half a chapter a night, as they had curled up on the sofa together. They had been planning on finishing the series, although obviously that hadn't happened.

At least, not yet. Aziraphale still held out hope that it would.

The Sorting Department did not deal with allocating witches and wizards a House. Instead, it sorted the souls of humans into one of two different locations. It was considered one of the least desirable jobs in Heaven, not least because it involved, occasionally, interacting with demons when they came up against a particularly borderline case that needed to be debated. It was also incredibly boring.

Aziraphale didn't get to interact with any demons. Not officially, anyway. He was considered to be too much of a risk for anything like that; he had already proven himself untrustworthy. They were probably right, too, because he knew for a fact that the first thing he would do if he had to spend time with any demon, would be to begin tempting the demon. First into giving him information, and eventually into helping him.

He was reasonably confident that he would be successful too.

But he didn't get to handle the complex or borderline cases. He was in charge of those cases deemed so basic that there was no actual consideration required. He was the angel that decided to send the purest souls to Heaven, and the most evil to Hell. He sentenced murderers and war criminals to Hell, and rubber-stamped the acceptance of saints into Heaven.

Despite this, despite the fact that it was physically impossible to make a mistake, every single decision that he made was checked and double checked by another angel, rendering his entire role pointless because, really, the angel doing the checking might as well have done the work in the first place.

The angel doing the checking was well aware of this, and occasionally — regularly — took it out on Aziraphale.

Of course, every decision he had made so far had been the right one; every case was so simple that there was only one choice that could possibly be made. He certainly wasn't going to allow evil souls into Heaven, or sentence those who had done nothing but good with their lives to an eternity of torture. He was, as Crowley had taken great pleasure in telling him, a bastard, but he wasn't enough of a bastard to do _that_.

Although, it would have been nice to imagine that he _could_, if the idea took his fancy. And he supposed that was the reason for the double checking.

In Heaven, there was no real concept of time. During six thousand years on Earth, he had grown accustomed to measuring his existence in terms of days and nights, months, centuries and millennia. In Heaven, he had no such frame of reference. Heaven was a never-ending flow of minutes, each more excruciating than the last. There were no tea breaks in Heaven, because angels did not drink tea. They didn't need to sleep either, nor to eat. The concept of rest was a mortal one.

Aziraphale, however had grown accustomed to it; to all of those things. Crowley had even taught him how to enjoy sleep, on occasion, although it still felt like a decadent waste of time. A little downtime would have been nice though. Perhaps a room where he could sit for a few hours and allow himself to get lost in a good book.

The absence of measurable time wore on him more than he had expected that it would. After all, he had lived in Heaven for some immeasurable amount of time before he had been sent to Earth, and it had never bothered him then. But that was before he had known better.

He thought of his bookshop, abandoned and left to go to ruin. Long absences were normal for him; he would frequently have to leave on a day's notice and travel to some other part of the world, either on heavenly — or, when the Agreement came into play, demonic — business, or to pick up some rare collector's item from the other side of the planet. But long-ish absences with the intention of returning were different to a sudden disappearance like this. He had no way to be certain of how long he had been gone, and thus no way to even realistically imagine what might be happening to the shop.

He thought of dust gathering on well-loved books. He thought of several lifetimes-worth of memories intrinsically tied to that shop; of the nights that he and Crowley had sat together, drinking and talking, and of the hours spent in the simple pleasure of a cup of cocoa and a favourite book. He thought of the place going to ruin, and he wanted to cry.

In a way, he almost wished the shop hadn't been re-formed after the world didn't end. To imagine it destroyed was heartbreaking, but to think of it slowly fading away might actually be worse.

Crowley had been handed a similar punishment to himself, but in Hell. He did not get to judge the souls of the easy-to-judge, but instead was employed in organising Hell's very disorganised filing system. As Aziraphale understood it, the work he had done was periodically undone, leaving him to start all over again.

If it was possible, it actually sounded worse than Aziraphale's fate. But then, it was Hell, so he supposed that it would be.

They had spoken, once or twice. It was surprisingly easy to communicate with Hell for the simple reason that nobody had ever thought to put in any safeguards against it. Why would they? It wasn't the kind of thing that any right-thinking angel should want to do. That rendered it not, technically, against the rules. The only tricky part was finding time alone to make the call.

He didn't get a lot of alone-time anymore, and he found that he missed solitude almost as much as he missed Crowley's company.

He knew that it wouldn't be forever, though. He took comfort in that.

Oh, as far as Heaven and Hell were concerned, it absolutely _would_ be forever. They had no intention of letting the two of them get together again, and certainly no plans to let either of them get to Earth. Gabriel had said as much, gloatingly, when he had allocated Aziraphale his new role.

But like communication with Hell, trips to Earth were not outlawed, they simply didn't happen very often because most angels had no desire to go there except on official business. A little like a trip to Milton Keynes, Aziraphale supposed, or Hull. Most people who did not live there would not even think of visiting the place unless they were given a good reason to do so.

It was the same in Hell, although for the life of him, Aziraphale couldn't fathom why. He had heard what life was like down there, and he had experienced what it was like in Heaven, and he knew without a doubt that Earth was preferable to both, yet millions of angels and demons willingly plodded their way through their lives without ever having seen Her greatest creation.

Which would afford himself and Crowley something of an advantage, when the time came.

They had a plan. One partially created before they had been taken, and then reiterated in snatched moments of conversation, and the occasional cryptic message passed on via the sympathetic and very easily manipulated angel in the Sorting Department who _did_ get to speak to demons officially. It would, of course, take time to earn the trust — or more likely the complacency — of the demons and angels that surrounded them, but eventually they would do it, and then, the first opportunity they got, they would escape.

On Earth, it wouldn't be easy to find them. They had the advantage of millennia on the planet, they understood the rules, and they knew how to be inconspicuous. They could go anywhere in the world, or even _off_ the world, if Crowley was serious about that. If they could learn how to live without miracles, they would be impossible to track.

London was out. It would be the first place that anybody looked for them. But Aziraphale figured that he might have time to swing by his bookshop, if it was still there, and pick up a few important items before anybody noticed that he was missing. The difficult part was going to be deciding which ones were important, because without miracles, there was the question of how to transport them.

They had already decided upon a meeting place; a village in the South Downs. They had selected it before Heaven and Hell had made their move, and bought a cottage there; a cash purchase of enough money to buy silence along with a home. They had not spoken the name of the village out loud since they had been brought to their respective headquarters. It was safe. They would meet there, and perhaps they would stay for a short time, before they would move on. To where, he didn't know yet. They would decide together.

Perhaps one day they would even return.

He would be counting the days, if such a thing as days still existed for him. Instead, he simply waited, kept his head down, and bided his time until he saw his opportunity to leave. It wouldn't be long; some of the angels were already starting to trust him, and the demons watching Crowley were growing careless.

It had been some time since the two of them had last spoken; although how much time it was, of course, impossible to say.

For all he knew, Crowley could be there already, in the cottage they had picked out, waiting for him.


	3. Chapter 3

"So, what's going on in Hell nowadays?" Crowley asked, seemingly out of the blue, one Thursday afternoon.

He kept the question as casual as he could, but Aziraphale could both hear and sense the undercurrent of tension behind the words. He felt himself freeze, uncertain of how to respond.

They didn't talk about that.

It was an unspoken agreement. They had never even said out loud that they weren't going to talk about it, because to do so would have meant, well, talking about it. Which they didn't want to do. Or at least, Aziraphale had _assumed_ they didn't; he had thought they had been on the same page about that. Apparently he had been mistaken.

He cleared his throat, more to buy himself time than out of any actual need to do so. "It's… fine," he said.

Crowley nodded, then lapsed into silence. Aziraphale shifted a little uncomfortably in his seat. It felt as though Crowley expected more; some kind of continuation of the conversation. But he didn't know how to do that. It wasn't like there was much to tell anyway; Hell was… well, it was Hell.

Nothing had changed there since Aziraphale had first reported to his orientation meeting, and he doubted that anything had changed since Crowley's last visit there either. It was overcrowded, uncomfortable, and frustrating. It was too warm, apart from those rooms that were inexplicably arctic, and there was a bad smell in the air that came either from the defective sulphur pits, or from the millions of demons that crowded the halls and offices.

Everything there had been, or appeared to have been, carefully designed in order to make it that little bit worse for its inhabitants. Aziraphale didn't understand why. It was Hell, and he understood that it wasn't supposed to be comfortable, but it stood to reason that the demons who lived there had invented the very processes and procedures that caused them so much frustration, and as they were the ones that suffered for them, Aziraphale couldn't figure out why they didn't just… make them better.

If he was being honest though, although he would never admit such a thing to Crowley, he marginally preferred it to Heaven. Hell was chaotic, true, but it was an organised chaos that reminded him of his own bookshop. And it wasn't like he had to spend a lot of time there.

Crowley was still looking at him as though he expected more. Aziraphale took a sip of his tea. "They've started talking about re-opening the sulphur pits," he said. "Dagon said that if angels are going to start falling again, we aught to have a proper way to welcome them. Whatever that means."

Crowley winced.

Prior to this, the one thing he had said about Hell in the three years since the world hadn't ended, was that Aziraphale had been lucky the pits were out of commission, and from what Aziraphale had heard in the discussion following the suggestion that they be re-opened, he was inclined to agree.

His own first time in Hell had been relatively pleasant. Well, in comparison to that of the other demons. He had reported for duty, been assigned a new name that he had absolutely no intention of using outside of official purposes, and been cryptically advised — with no small amount of glee — that there would be a few surprises along the way and that he wasn't going to like them, and then he had been sent back to Earth with instructions to cause a little trouble here and there, and to wait for further orders.

They had been right. There had been surprises, and he hadn't liked them at _all_.

He hoped there wasn't any resentment among his fellow demons that his fall hadn't been quite as painful as theirs. There had been pain, of course. His entire being had been forcibly changed. But unlike them, it hadn't ended with a crash-landing into molten sulphur. His physical body, assigned to him in Heaven, had remained more-or-less intact, and he hadn't physically fallen anywhere, but had remained on Earth. Any subsequent visits to Hell had been via the front door.

"Told you you lucked out there," Crowley told him.

The sulphur pits had been out of commission for several millennia, closed for refurbishment and never re-opened because demons were notoriously lazy, and because when nobody Fell anymore, what was the point going to all the effort of getting them back into their boiling, flesh-searing order?

Aziraphale nodded. It hadn't felt lucky at the time, but he had come to realise over time that Crowley had been right.

He cleared his throat again. "And in Heaven?" he asked. He didn't really want to know, but it was only polite to ask, after all.

Crowley shrugged. "I haven't spent a lot of time there."

No, neither had Aziraphale, back when he had been welcome, but he had still formed definite opinions about the place, and Aziraphale had no doubt that Crowley had formed similar ones to his own.

"It's boring," Crowley said. "I'm sure it used to be more fun back when I was there the first time round. But I guess maybe all the fun angels end up as demons."

Aziraphale wasn't sure how to take that.

"Being back there, it's…" he frowned. "It's really fucking weird."

Aziraphale winced. "Crowley, please! You're an angel now. You can't go around saying…" he hesitated. He was well within his rights to say anything he pleased, and he had in fact employed a few choice swear words at appropriate moments even before he had Fallen. They still made him a little uncomfortable.

"Saying what?" Crowley asked, a picture of innocence, as though he genuinely didn't understand what he had done wrong. He watched him closely to see whether he would say the word or try to scuttle around the edge of it like the rat that he was now.

Aziraphale looked away, down at the ground. He lowered his voice to almost a whisper. "Fuck," he said.

"Don't see why not," Crowley said with an unconcerned shrug. "If they don't like it, they can always demote me again. Hopefully they'll do it fast though, before those pits are in working order again. Honestly, I'd take hanging out with demons over angels any day. I knew Gabriel was a dick, but I didn't realise how much of a dick until now."

"Crowley, you can't…" Aziraphale began.

"Who's going to stop me? I'm not scared of them."

Aziraphale sighed. He supposed that technically he should be encouraging this kind of behaviour, or at the very least just letting it go. Something was wrong, though. There was something more going on here. "What did they do?" he asked.

He was quite willing to march into Heaven and give Gabriel a piece of his mind if he had to. In fact, he rather relished the idea. Perhaps he could take some hellfire with him; that would certainly shake things up a bit.

The corner of Crowley's lips quirked into a fraction of a smile, as though he could read Aziraphale's thoughts in his face. Maybe he could. He shook his head. "Nothing. It's not like that. I'm just getting sick of it, you know? I don't know how you put up with it for all those years."

He hadn't had a lot of choice. It wasn't like open rebellion was something that you could easily get away with in Heaven; the punishment for it was fairly well documented, and not something that any right-thinking angel would want to endure. Aziraphale had put up with it, mostly, by spending as little time in Heaven as he could get away with, and as much time as he reasonably _could_, hanging out with a demon instead.

Which, he supposed, had made him a fairly terrible angel. By Heaven's standards at least.

And which said exactly the same thing about Crowley. He probably wasn't exactly endearing himself to his new superiors, and in fairness, he probably hadn't been well-liked or accepted from the beginning. The demons in Hell at least had a little grudging respect for Aziraphale; he had found out after he arrived that he had something of a reputation down there already.

There was definitely more going on here than Crowley was letting on, though. It made sense, why else would he suddenly want to talk about a subject that he had carefully skirted around for three years?

"Did Gabriel say something to you?" Aziraphale asked.

Crowley shook his head. "No. Really, it's nothing. I mean, there was a bit of gloating about what a terrible time you're having, and it made me realise, it's been over three years since I asked how you were doing with it all."

That was true. In the beginning, Crowley had asked him almost constantly whether he was okay and how he was feeling, and Aziraphale had answered him every time with a lie. When the question had been dropped, and had never returned, Aziraphale had assumed it was because they weren't going to talk about it anymore. And they hadn't. Not until now.

"I'm fine," Aziraphale told him. It was less of a lie now than it had used to be. There were aspects of what had been done to him that he was still not comfortable with, and that he probably never would be, but he was getting used to it. He realised that while Crowley _had_ tried to check up on him on occasion, Aziraphale had never once done the same for him.

He felt a little bad about that, now that he thought about it. Although, in his defence, he had spent thousands of years terrified that he was going to Fall for his association with a demon, and finally, the worst had happened. Crowley, by contrast, had become an angel. It had been easy to see who had gotten the better half of that particular deal.

Only, looking at it from the distance of a few years, maybe he had been wrong about that.

"And you?" he asked. "Are you okay, Crowley?"

Crowley appeared to consider the question; to give it real thought, as though he wanted to be sure that he didn't get it wrong. "No," he told him eventually. "Not even close."

Oh.

He thought back to their initial confusion when this had happened. He remembered wondering what either Heaven or Hell had to gain from it, and realising that the answer was 'nothing', and that it had been done purely to punish them. It had still seemed odd.

He remembered Crowley, more than a few drinks in, Aziraphale's best single malt scotch spilling over the edge of his glass as he swung it around, "As punishments go, it's kinda lame though, don't you think? 'Muahahaha you're an angel and a demon and I will doom you to… being an angel and a demon.' I mean, what were they thinking?"

Aziraphale knew the answer to that now. He supposed the enjoyment for Gabriel and Beelzebub was probably in watching them squirm.

"Angel?" Crowley asked him.

Crowley still liked to call him angel. At first, it had made him uncomfortable, It had felt as though he was saying it to rub it in, to make a point of the fact that it was no longer true. He had quickly realised that wasn't the case; it was simply a habit that Crowley was unable to break. Now, he liked it. It felt like a 'fuck you' to both Heaven and Hell, something to show that no matter what they did, things would not change. They were on their own side, and the sides to which they were allocated made no difference whatsoever.

Which wasn't to say that it was going to be easy to get used to. But they had a lot of time in which to do so.

Aziraphale leaned against him, resting his head on Crowley's shoulder and smiled. "You _will_ be okay," he promised. "Eventually. I think we both will." And this time, for the first time, he wasn't lying. Not even a little bit.

* * *

Comments are loved. If you're enjoying, please let me know :-)


	4. Chapter 4

"You like the world, don't you Aziraphale?"

Aziraphale hesitated, unsure how to answer. He had made it abundantly clear in his reports back to Heaven since the very beginning, and in his actions over the past eleven years or so that yes, he liked the world a great deal. After all, if he hadn't, he would hardly have risked everything in an attempt to save it.

He just wasn't sure whether admitting that now, tied to an office chair in Heaven's conference room, while Gabriel and two other Archangels stood over him, was the best course of action. Maybe feigned indifference would work better.

Or perhaps it would be better to say nothing at all, and simply wait for Gabriel to continue.

He looked at the Archangel, standing over him with a smug expression on his face and realised that no, that wouldn't work at all. Gabriel was looking down at him expectantly, waiting for a reply. Clearly the question hadn't been a rhetorical one.

Aziraphale shrugged internally. There was no right answer here; whatever he said was bound to be a mistake. He straightened himself up as best he could while tied to an uncomfortable wheeled chair, tried to square his shoulders, then looked Gabriel directly in the eye. "Yes," he said. "I do."

The grin that spread instantly across Gabriel's face sent a cold spike of terror right to the centre of Aziraphale's being, and he knew with absolute certainty that whatever happened next was going to be bad.

He hoped that he hadn't just doomed the planet again.

"Yes?" Gabriel asked, still smiling as though he was getting everything he had ever wanted. "And you like your demonic boyfriend too, I'm sure. Your books. Your… gross matter."

Aziraphale nodded. It was too late to take it back now, and Gabriel wouldn't have believed him even if he had. He got the distinct impression that this entire conversation had already been planned out in Gabriel's mind and that it wouldn't matter what he did, or did not say, the outcome was going to be the same.

"I do," he said, a little stiffly.

If it were possible, Gabriel's grin grew wider still. He glanced excitedly at Sandalphon, at his side. It was clear that everything was going exactly according to plan. He turned back to Aziraphale.

"Imagine what it would be like," he said, "if you could never see any of them again."

"You can't keep me apart from Crowley," Aziraphale told him. "Not unless you plan to kill me."

That wasn't true, of course. It was completely within Gabriel's power to keep the two of them apart. All he would need to do, would be to hold Aziraphale there, in Heaven, where Crowley couldn't reach him. The demon had been snatched by the forces of Hell at the same moment that Aziraphale had been taken, and was presumably undergoing some similar treatment in Hell. If he were to be kept there too, it would be next to impossible for the two of them to find each other again.

But then, eternity, as Crowley had impressed upon him once upon a time, was a very long time. He genuinely did doubt that Gabriel would be able to keep them apart forever.

Gabriel shrugged dismissively, as though he was accepting Aziraphale's point. "I mean, I wouldn't have to kill _you_. I could just kill _him_ instead. But you're right, I'm not going to do that. I'm an angel; we don't go around killing people." He hesitated. "Well, present company excepted, I suppose. I hear you were completely on board with killing that kid. I mean, I know he was the antichrist, but come on, Aziraphale. Murder? Really?"

It hadn't been one of his prouder moments, and he realised now that if he _had _managed to go through with it — if he hadn't been sharing a body with someone who had disagreed with the course of action, and he had been able to pull the trigger unimpeded — it wouldn't have actually helped matters at all. In fact, it probably would have made them significantly worse.

He remained silent. He couldn't think of an answer to give, and even if he _could_, he had already established that it wouldn't make any difference.

"Anyway," Gabriel continued. "Killing you would be too easy, and not as much fun. See, I was talking to Lord Beelzebub about it, and they had some… alternative suggestions. Demons have a knack for that kind of thing that angels just don't have, you know? I mean, I know they say they don't have any imagination, but let me tell you…"

Now _that_ was worrying. Aziraphale shifted as well as he was able on the uncomfortable chair, and tried not to imagine the kinds of torment that Hell might have dreamt up for him. The human imagination described Hell as a place filled with fire and pitchforks, but he already knew that the reality was much, much worse.

"You're working with demons?" he asked. It seemed… improbable, but he knew that it must be true. Gabriel wouldn't lie about something like that.

The Archangel frowned. "That's not _disapproval_ I hear, is it? You're one to talk, my friend. You _do not_ get to judge me, you _pathetic_ excuse for an angel."

His voice grew more powerful as he spoke; not louder, but more forceful, and Aziraphale tried not to tremble at the holy power behind it. He stared straight ahead, his expression blank. Terror curled in the stomach and chest of the human body that he was wearing, but he refused to let it show. He refused to give Gabriel the satisfaction.

"So," Gabriel continued, back to his usual tone, "Beelzebub suggested we make you Fall. It's been a while since an angel Fell, you know. Turns out the punishment department down there is eager to get a new recruit to pressure into service. And on a personal note, I'd be _fascinated_ to see what you'd look like as a demon." He turned to Sandalphon. "What do you think? Fangs? Horns? Some of them actually have horns, you know."

Sandalphon shrugged. "Maybe he'd be all snakey too. They could match."

"Snake eyes! Yes!" Gabriel laughed gleefully. "Well, whatever he got, it'd make it difficult for him to keep on running that bookshop, passing for human. I can't imagine I believed it was just a cover. He _loves_ it. Just as much as he loves the demon." He shuddered. "Gross."

Aziraphale wondered how fast he could get the wheels of the office chair to move if he tried to propel it across the floor by moving his feet. Not fast enough, probably. "Well, Angels are beings of love," he reminded them. Although, to look around this room it was very difficult to believe that.

"Love of the _Almighty_," Sandalphon corrected. "Not of demons, and human artefacts, and food."

Gabriel nodded. "Well said. Now that I think about it, maybe we should change the plan. How do you think he'd like it if he couldn't taste anymore either? Is that something we could do?"

Sandalphon folded his arms and looked thoughtful. "Trickier," he said. "It's a mortal body thing, so all he'd need to do would be to change the body. There's even a chance he or the demon would be able to heal him."

Gabriel looked supremely disappointed at that. "Fine," he said. "We'll just stick to the plan, then."

Aziraphale couldn't stand this any longer. He knew it was exactly what Gabriel wanted, but he found himself asking before he could stop himself. "And the plan is what, exactly?"

The Archangel smiled down at him condescendingly and continued with his spiel. "Well, we decided you wouldn't Fall, because that would only serve to bring you and the demon closer together," he told him. "Don't worry, we're going to keep it in reserve though, in case you step out of line again. Do you know the difference between demons and angels, Aziraphale?"

He let the question hang in the air for only a fraction of a second, not long enough for Aziraphale to come up with an answer, before he continued.

"Demons can't sense the Almighty. They can't feel her love. Have you ever thought about what that would be like, Aziraphale? Or maybe you don't have to, you could just ask… what's his name? Crawly. It's going to be very dark in your world soon; can you imagine what it would be like if it were cold and empty too?"

He knew that Gabriel was only drawing this out to torture him; to make the whole thing so much worse. It was probably a tip from Hell. He refused to give in to the urge to beg for clarification. If his arms were free, he would have folded them, as it was, he glared up at the Archangel and tried not to look afraid. "I'm quite sure I have no idea what you are talking about."

"No," Gabriel told him. "No, I know you don't." He was smiling in a way that Aziraphale _really_ didn't like. "So, we were brainstorming how to do this. I mean, if the human body you're in gets damaged, you suffer the effects, but like Sandalphon here said, that can be healed. Even if we fix it so you can't do it yourself, maybe your boyfriend in the shades can pull some… hamster… out of his hat."

"Rabbit," Aziraphale corrected. He didn't particularly want to participate in this conversation anymore, but he couldn't sit by as Gabriel got such a basic aspect of magic wrong.

Gabriel waved a hand dismissively. "Rabbit, right. Anyway, damaging the vessel won't help in the long-run, so I thought… damage the celestial body instead." He turned to his right. "That sound good to you, Sandalphon?" He turned back to Aziraphale, "Smiting's his department, as you know."

"Erm…" Aziraphale said. He didn't like the way this was going. Not that he had expected to like the way this conversation went, but he _really_ didn't like it. "Damage?" he asked. "You're going to _damage_ me?"

"Yup. You're going to like this… well, no. You're going to hate it, but _I'm_ going to like it. "Now, wounding the celestial body is a little trickier, but we came up with something. Well, Beez did. Hellfire!" he smiled like a gameshow host introducing the top prize. "If it gets bright enough, I think we can burn out every one of those eyes of yours."

A chill passed through him; a coldness so deep within him that it felt as though his very soul was turning to ice.

"I wonder if you'll keep the bookshop." Gabriel mused as he turned to leave. "I mean, once you can't read the books, will there really be any point?"

As he and the other angels walked away, a demon entered the room. He glared menacingly at the three retreating angels. Eventually, his gaze fell on Aziraphale, still tied to the chair in the middle of the room. Aziraphale wasn't sure, but he thought he might have detected a flash of sympathy in the demon's eyes. It was gone as soon as he noticed it. Probably his imagination.

"We'll be outside," Gabriel said to the demon, who, with a wave of his hand, lit a fire in the centre of the room. "Give us a shout when it's safe for us to come in and collect him."

Aziraphale wanted to shout after them; to beg and plead for them to reconsider. The words died in his throat; he knew that it would do no good. Their minds were made up, and had been made up long before they had brought him here. There was no hope for mercy. Not from Gabriel.

The only thing that he could do now, was to try not to let them see his fear.


	5. Chapter 5

It had been three days, and nothing. No word from Heaven, or from Hell, no divine judgements, no Hellfire; nothing.

Aziraphale didn't like it.

Sooner or later, they were going to make their move. He didn't know when, and he didn't know what it would be, but the one thing that he did know, with absolute certainty, was that it _would_ happen. They wouldn't let what they had done go unpunished.

And Crowley too; he wouldn't get away with it either. There was little doubt in Aziraphale's mind that Hell was plotting something for his friend, and likely something even worse than Heaven could come up with. It was true that most demons lacked imagination, but they were extremely good at punishing people.

Right now, Aziraphale wished that _he_ lacked an imagination. His was currently working overtime, feeding him terrifying images of all kinds of things that he was quite certain were worse than anything Heaven actually had in their arsenal.

But then, maybe Heaven and Hell would work together to punish the two of them. They had, after all, been completely united in their anger at their respective agents. With the war called off, it wasn't completely outside of the realms of possibility that they might combine their efforts to do something about the angel and the demon that had stopped all their plans.

And if the worked together, well, the possibilities were so much worse. Not bad enough, though, that Aziraphale's fertile imagination could not come up with suggestions. He had, after all, spent millennia lost in the writings of creative human beings. he had picked up a thing or two.

It would be keeping him up at night, if he slept. It was certainly having that kind of an effect on Crowley, who was currently pacing the limited floor-space of the bookshop like a caged elephant in a very old zoo, slowly being driven mad.

Aziraphale cleared his throat. "Maybe they'll just let it go," he suggested, not really believing it.

Crowley paused in his pacing to look at him. Something in his gaze suggested that the Aziraphale had taken leave of his senses. He shook his head. "They're not going to let it go, angel. This is _Hell_ we're talking about. They know how to hold a grudge. Your lot do too."

He was right, of course. In fact, Aziraphale might even go so far as to say that Heaven was _better_ at holding a grudge, although not knowing the exact state of affairs in Hell, it was difficult to be certain. They were certainly not as forgiving as humanity seemed to believe.

"No, they're biding their time," Crowley told him. "And they're doing it on purpose. Both of them. They'll wait until we finally relax, until the moment we let ourselves believe that we might have gotten away with it, and then…" his words tailed off into silence.

"And then?" Aziraphale prompted.

Crowley shrugged. "I don't know! Could be anything; that's the whole point, isn't it? You keep your victim good and scared, and not knowing what's going to happen, or when, makes it worse. It's basic stuff."

Aziraphale straightened the fabric of his jacket with the backs of his hands and sat up a little straighter. "Well, I wouldn't know. Punishing people isn't exactly in Heaven's remit."

The demon stared at him, eyes wide in disbelief. "Not in their _remit_?" He shook his head. "Ever heard of the Fall? You know, millions of angels burning in agony as they were cast out of Heaven? Ring any bells?"

Aziraphale looked away as he desperately tried not to think about that, not to imagine it being his own fate. "Yes, well, that was a little different…"

"Kicking Adam and Eve out of the garden just because I managed to convince them to try a piece of fruit? Drowning people, drowning _children_ in forty days and nights of rain because… what exactly? Because humans were doing what humans do? Sodom and Gomorrah? Murdering all the firstborns of Egypt? Not the ones doing the actual enslaving, but kids again. Heaven's so good at punishing people they punish the ones that don't even deserve it."

"Alright," Aziraphale conceded. "Fine, yes. Alright." He sank into a chair, no clue what to do.

"And as far as they're concerned, we do deserve it," Crowley added.

Aziraphale really wished he could switch off his imagination, just for a little while. Because Crowley was absolutely right, and he didn't want to think about it.

Every demon was an angel once," Crowley continued. "Where do you think they get that penchant for torture from in the first place?"

* * *

Aziraphale checked the time on the old grandfather clock that stood against the wall between two overcrowded bookshelves. It had been a week. Seven whole days, right down to the minute, since the world hadn't ended. Seven whole days of waiting for the hammer to fall. Holding his breath, expecting it at any moment.

"Maybe that's it," he mused.

Crowley looked up. He wasn't wearing his shades and for a moment, Aziraphale thought that the stress of the situation had brought his eyes to full snake. On second glance, he realised that the whites of his friend's eyes were not yellow, but bloodshot red with exhaustion and lack of sleep.

"You should really get some rest," he said. He didn't sleep, personally, but he knew that Crowley _did_, and apparently over the years his human body had grown accustomed to it, not unlike his own with food.

"Maybe what's it?" Crowley asked, ignoring the suggestion.

Aziraphale considered his answer carefully. "You said a few days ago that they would wait until we relaxed before they made their move. Maybe if we never do, that will keep them away."

"Great," said Crowley. His voice dripped with sarcasm. "So all we have to do is keep feeling like this for the rest of time."

He was right, it wasn't the best solution. Especially when one considered that believing they had a way out of their predicament was the kind of thing that was bound to let them relax a little anyway.

"Not possible, anyway," Crowley continued. "Nobody can keep up that level of anxiety forever. Not even you, Aziraphale. Eventually you're going to start to think you're safe."

Aziraphale sighed. Crowley was right. It had begun to happen already. This time last week, he certainly hadn't been making plans for the future, now he found himself wondering what the weather would be like tomorrow and whether it might be a good day for a stroll in the park.

He wondered how relaxed was _too_ relaxed.

* * *

It had been almost two months. August had long-since faded, first into an increasingly chilly September, and then into a drizzly October. The nights had been drawing in for some time, but they appeared to have accelerated, and it had long-since passed the point where there were more hours of darkness than of sunlight.

There was a chill in the air. People had begun to bring out their winter coats, their gloves and scarves and wooly hats. Some of the larger shops had begun to stock items for Christmas. Aziraphale wondered whether he would still be on Earth to see it this year. He did so enjoy the decorations, the fairy lights, the same old songs on the radio and the sense of love they appeared to provoke in the people around him. For a short time every year, at the end of December when life should have been hardest, love appeared to pervade the whole city for a short time, and it was beautiful.

Maybe, just maybe, they really had been forgiven. Or maybe whatever Adam had done when he had changed reality had made Heaven and Hell forget what they had done. Maybe, as far as they were concerned, there was nothing to forgive.

He didn't believe that though. Not really. As much as he wished that he could. All had been quiet from Heaven since that day at the Airbase in Tadfield. Complete radio silence. That didn't happen. If Gabriel had really forgotten the incident, somebody would have been in touch with some task for him to perform. The fact that they had not, told him that things were very much not okay.

He _wished_ that someone would get in touch. It didn't matter what for. If he could just have a short conversation with another angel, he might be able to work out the mood in Heaven from the way that they spoke or the words that they used.

But nothing. Nothing at all.

He had imagined a thousand scenarios by now, each one worse than the last. He was quite sure that no matter what Heaven decided in the end, he had already lived through worse in his own mind.

Aziraphale sighed and pulled his old coat a little tighter around himself, reluctant to use a miracle when he didn't really need to, for fear of drawing attention to himself. He passed a shop with a Halloween window display of pumpkins and autumn leaves next, to one where a young woman with messy hair and a beautiful smile was putting the finishing touches to a Christmas one.

Soon, he supposed, it would be time to begin his annual campaign of attempting to put customers off from entering his shop in search of gifts. The thought made him tired, and some quiet part of his mind began to suggest that really, was there any point?

* * *

"Do you think we got away with it?" Aziraphale asked. He spoke in a whisper, although he knew that there was no point. If Heaven were listening, they wouldn't be deterred by quiet voices.

It had been six months since the world hadn't ended, and it was the first time that Aziraphale had dared to voice the question aloud.

It was the middle of February and snow glistened in the trees and on the untrodden areas of the park, while the paths, and the rest of the city, had been rendered the dirty grey of well-trodden sludge.

Crowley hesitated. His hand stilled inside the brown bag that he was holding on his lap, and a nearby duck quacked in frustration when the food it had been expecting failed to materialise. "No," he said. "No, I don't."

Aziraphale sighed, and he could see his breath.

The demon tossed a handful of duck food — they didn't throw bread, not anymore. Not since Aziraphale had learned how bad it was for the ducks —to the waiting birds.

"No," Aziraphale agreed. "I suppose you're probably right."

* * *

It had been two years. Aziraphale wasn't sure how, but those two years had appeared to last longer than the entire last decade; maybe even the last two decades put together. Perhaps maybe time was slowing down as a way of prolonging their misery, or perhaps it was the opposite. Perhaps it slowed as a curtesy to them, to allow them to make the most of the short time that they had.

But most likely it was neither of those things. Most likely, it was simply his perception, growing confused under the stress of not knowing.

The human body he wore had grown thin from lack of food. He still _did_ eat, but certainly not with the same gusto as before. It was difficult to enjoy a meal when you managed to convince yourself every time that it would be your last.

He knew that he should forget about it, just try to carry on as he had before. It wasn't as though worrying about it would stop it from happening. All worry did was ruin the time that he had left. But he couldn't help it. He had always worried, right from the beginning. He had worried when he had given away his sword, and every time he had spoken to Crowley. He had worried when they had struck up the Arrangement, and he had worried when Crowley had suggested trying to save the world.

Worry was familiar. Without it, he didn't know who he was.

But it had always been something that came and went. He had never lived with so much anxiety for so long without respite. It was beginning to wear on him.

It hadn't even been that long, he reminded himself. In Heaven, two years could pass in the blink of an eye. The judgement, when it came, could come at any time.

He tried not to think about it, and in doing so, found himself thinking about it even more.

* * *

It had been twelve years; long enough to see the world beginning to move on around him. He was beginning to see changes in technology, and to notice new regular customers coming into his shop; young adults that had been children when the world hadn't ended. People that had had a life because of what they had done.

It was gratifying, in a way. Twelve whole years of people meeting and falling in love. Twelve years of friendships. Twelve years-worth of new literature and movies and all the other things humanity could create with their clever minds. Twelve years of new babies being born that would never have existed if the world had ended.

He and Crowley had done that.

Well, no, not them alone. Adam had done it, with the help of his friends as well as Crowley and Aziraphale. And the witch and her boyfriend, was now her husband, and Madam Tracey, and even Shadwell.

Twelve years of weddings. Of people growing old together.

But also twelve years of loss. And of heartbreak.

He liked to think that the good outweighed the bad. And even if it didn't, the world continued. It had the potential to go on for millions of years. It could be so much more than just a battleground in the war between good and evil.

"What are you thinking about?" Crowley asked.

The demon was lounging in a chair in a way that did not look comfortable at all; sitting the wrong way around, curved around it in a manor that for anybody that wasn't actually a snake, would have been quite impossible

He was wearing new sunglasses. He tended to change them every few years or so, when he got bored of a style, or they fell out of fashion, or simply because he saw a new pair that struck his fancy. It had been an unusually long time since he had updated his look though. In fact, this was the first new pair he had worn since… well, for twelve years.

That was encouraging, Aziraphale supposed. It meant that he was starting to move on, starting to stop worrying about what might happen tomorrow.

He only wished that he could do the same. The night before, as he had sat drinking a cup of cocoa and allowing his mind to wonder in a way that he rarely did anymore, he had imagined that he had Fallen; been cast out of Heaven and into the depths of Hell. That he had awoken as a demon, cut off from God's love.

On other, similar nights, he had imagined that he and Crowley had become human; that they had been forced to age and eventually to die, and face a different kind of judgement. Other times, he imagined Gabriel standing over him, gloating as he pronounced some torture or another. Whatever it was going to be, he just wanted it over with. He was ready now. He had been ready for a long time.

It couldn't be as bad as he was imagining.

"Angel?" Crowley asked, concerned now.

Aziraphale shook his head. "Nothing, dear," he lied. If Crowley was going to move on, he was going to do his best to pretend to do the same. "How about a spot of lunch?"

* * *

He wasn't sure how long it had been. A long time; he knew that much. He could probably work it out, if he tried. He didn't want to. It felt as though it was better not to know.

It had been a long time, and still nothing had happened. He felt sure that by now he should be able to relax, but he just couldn't. Every time he felt himself enjoying something, or looking to the future, he remembered the threat hanging over his head, and the anxiety returned.

He knew, deep down, that this _was_ the punishment. That it had probably been their plan all along, to keep them guessing to the point of madness, to have them constantly looking over their shoulders, to make sure that they could never again just relax and enjoy the world.

He knew it, but at the same time, he couldn't be sure. Heaven and Hell could still be biding their time. A judgement could still be waiting around the next corner.

He almost wished that it was. That they would simply make their move, whatever it was, and then leave him to deal with the consequences. He didn't care what those consequences might be; he just wanted it to be over.

But it never would be, would it? It would always be there, waiting.

Crowley had been right; if Heaven were not better than Hell at punishment, they were at least exactly as good.

He shivered despite the heat of the summer morning, and glanced around the bookshop. It looked different now. Old books sold off, replaced with new. It had happened slowly, so slowly that he had barely noticed that it was happening. One book sold to a particularly enthusiastic collector, another to an old woman that had cried with joy when she had picked up a first edition of her childhood favourite from his shelf, and little by little, his collection had begun to dwindle.

After all, if he could no longer enjoy them, why not sell them on to somebody that could? Only his very favourites remained, in a box in the back room, out of view of customers. It had been a very long time since he had read them, perhaps it was time to sell those too.

He would think about it, when he got back.

He took a deep breath and released a sigh, then turned the sign on the door to 'closed' and headed out into the city to meet Crowley in the park.


End file.
